The work I want to focus on was produced at Michigan Technological University for UN 2001: Revisions--Oral, Written, and Visual Communication, which is a general education course populated mostly by sophomores. In addition to helping students expand their grasp of multimodal communication, the course is intended to introduce rhetorical principles and hone research practices.
Assignment
In a nutshell, the project asks students to put forth their solutions to any unresolved question, event, or cultural dilemma. Here’s an excerpt from the assignment sheet:
For this project, you will examine a mystery and then decide upon a solution—the goal is to persuade your chosen audience that you have undoubtedly solved the mystery. As with our other assignments, you will continue to combine information with your own voice to generate something new; however, Project #3 will spring from the relationships you infer between existing sources, so it’s important to start researching early.
I do not stipulate any particular format or medium, although I do note that the strongest argumentative syntheses for this project have tended to use at lease ten outside sources from various information genres. The assignment consists of the following:
A collaboratively produced composition
A 30-minute multimedia presentation
An individually written reflective essay
The process begins by students explaining what they are interested in pursuing and then pitching their ideas in class to recruit group members. Afterwards, each group writes up a statement that argues why their topic would make a worthwhile project; what kind of sources they expect to find; the audience, purpose, and context for the project; and what medium the final project will use and why.
Sample Project
Given the broadness of the assignment, the projects that are handed in take a variety of forms--students seem to embrace the freedom of not having to turn in a formulaic essay and often push themselves to learn new technologies that will help them produce compositions with a higher visual and audio impact. Because of the greater investment that attention to new technologies and multiple modes of communication demands, students seem to be more invested in the research process and the final product as well. For the conference, I wanted to focus on a movie that was turned in about the Paulding Light, a notorious ghost light not too far down the road, because of how the project allied and complicated multimodality and collaboration for me.
The Paulding Light Project
(coming as soon as I capture the clips...)
Course Description
The work I want to focus on was produced at Michigan Technological University for UN 2001: Revisions--Oral, Written, and Visual Communication, which is a general education course populated mostly by sophomores. In addition to helping students expand their grasp of multimodal communication, the course is intended to introduce rhetorical principles and hone research practices.Assignment
In a nutshell, the project asks students to put forth their solutions to any unresolved question, event, or cultural dilemma. Here’s an excerpt from the assignment sheet:I do not stipulate any particular format or medium, although I do note that the strongest argumentative syntheses for this project have tended to use at lease ten outside sources from various information genres. The assignment consists of the following:
The process begins by students explaining what they are interested in pursuing and then pitching their ideas in class to recruit group members. Afterwards, each group writes up a statement that argues why their topic would make a worthwhile project; what kind of sources they expect to find; the audience, purpose, and context for the project; and what medium the final project will use and why.
Sample Project
Given the broadness of the assignment, the projects that are handed in take a variety of forms--students seem to embrace the freedom of not having to turn in a formulaic essay and often push themselves to learn new technologies that will help them produce compositions with a higher visual and audio impact. Because of the greater investment that attention to new technologies and multiple modes of communication demands, students seem to be more invested in the research process and the final product as well. For the conference, I wanted to focus on a movie that was turned in about the Paulding Light, a notorious ghost light not too far down the road, because of how the project allied and complicated multimodality and collaboration for me.The Paulding Light Project
(coming as soon as I capture the clips...)